Thing 23

I can hardly believe I have made it through to Thing 23. It has been intense. At the beginning I just kept thinking, "I hope I get it. I hope that with my limited computer skills I am able to accomplish each task." Talk about differentiation - I know there are blogs and wikis with more apparent skill, but to me, my sites are the best I am capable of at this point and I am very proud of myself. I have started something for me that will grow and it will benefit myself and my students, as well as my co-workers. I thank the resa23things team. You are providing a great service for education in Wayne County.

Thing 22

Well, here I am. I have actually created a wiki and it will, hopefully, become a usable creation this fall. I am a faculty advisor for our National Elementary Honor Society and am going to work on the wiki for this group of students. Yes, I am at a very early stage. I did give it a name, upload an image and embedded a video. I removed the video after realizing that other videos of an inappropriate nature came along with it. I believe the reason is because the one I intended for my site was actually a video response to another video on YouTube. Let this be a warning to others! I am excited about it, though, and am looking forward to my own progress and the future success of this wiki. The site is MarquetteChapterNEHS.wikispaces.com

Thing 21

Wow! It all seems a little overwhelming at this point. When I look at the variety of wikis and see some that are very complicated and some that are very simple, I'm feeling a little out of my depth. I do know, however, that I will be taking one step at a time and feel encouraged that through this process, it will begin to come together. So, here goes. On to Thing 22! By the way, I really enjoyed various wikis, but one that caught my eye was the ABC Learning Resources Centre where teachers from all over have contributed pictures of themselves to advertise books that they would like teachers and students, as well as parents, to read (located in the Book Talk, Home page, BookVideo Ning section). Wonderful!

Thing 20

In this lesson I learned how to subscribe to podcasts and add them to my iTunes library. I found this interesting and will be on the lookout for more that I may want to add. As a beginning step I subscribed to podcasts called Modern Manners Guy and NPR Talk of the Nation. It is still a little frustrating to me on iTunes because I am not very familiar with navigating their site. Finding a podcast on there and clicking on it often takes me to a screen I don't understand or that seems to be taking me nowhere. Anyway, I will persevere!

Thing 19

Podcasts! I am looking forward to more exploration of this media. I especially appreciated the sites like Grammar Girl, mathgrad.com, and I found the one created by students in Dearborn with their mystery story and illustrations very appealing. There are so many possibilities for motivating students to create, write, and illustrate stories by using technology. How refreshing it will be for my students to be awakened to these new options.

Thing 18

Sunset Beautiful (Nx Power Lite)

View more presentations from ADRIANA CIOBANU.

Great! I have successfully embedded a slideshow into my blog. That was my goal and all of the lessons leading up to this have truly inspired me to use more technology in my classroom. What more can I ask for? Now, sit back and enjoy the presentation.

Thing 17

On-line productivity tools are interesting to explore and seem to be available in an endless array of interests. I did like Knowtes and think that this might be one I could use. I also looked into wordlearner.com as suggested by another participant and really liked it, too. I will continue to explore these types of sites and can now add them to Delicious if I so desire.

Thing 16

Google docs, what a great discovery! To be able to allow students and/or teachers to work on documents or spreadsheets with others, but at their own computers and at their own convenience without the hassle of email, is almost life changing. For example, I have the leveled library for our elementary school in my room and have distributed copies of all the books and levels several times to the other teachers. They come in and hope that the set of books they want is there and check it out. Now, I have uploaded the list, in spreadsheet form, onto Google docs. I can add new books, put in columns for checking out/checking in books and teachers can see all that are available. No more need to copy and re-copy the list. I am also on several committees where letters and other documents are created and the collaboration for these will be so much easier with Google docs.

Thing 15

In this lesson I learned how to subscribe to a tag and also how to clean up my Bloglines folders. This will encourage me to access my Bloglines account more often as I will have more control over the content. As I read feeds more often, I'm sure it will become a habit. It has not yet, but is so new to me that I haven't developed that yet. I want to create folders specifically for the committees I will be on once school starts, as well as folders that will help me with recurring problems and areas of interest in my work. I think the sense of organization will be a great help.

Thing 14

In Thing 14 I subscribed to Delicious and bookmarked and tagged web sites that I wish to share with others. My user name is ellie19z if you wish to explore my chosen pages. I look forward to looking at others' sites and I'm sure I'll find some great ones that will be very helpful to me. Now, instead of finding out accidentally about another teacher's gem of a site, or losing the paper on which she/he wrote the url, we can open accounts in Delicious and share generously.

Thing 13

In this lesson I have been reading about social bookmarking. There are lots of new terms like "folksonomy" and "tagging", but I am excited about the prospect of really putting this to use. I used to email myself a website if I found a good one at work so that I could go on it when I got home. Now, with Delicious, I will have my websites available to me on any computer that is connected to the web. Another aspect of this is the fact that I would save a website if I felt it was really good, but would often forget about it as it was merely one of many in long list of favorites, categorized in a very general way depending on the folder it was in. Now, with tagging, I can search for a specific tag and all the sites that apply will pop up.

Thing 12

In this exercise I learned about widgets and how to put them into my blog. I knew interactive items existed, but I didn't know that I would be able to shop around and find some that I could actually insert into my blog. This is a lot of fun!

Thing 11

I enjoyed this activity very much. I have not been going to other people's blogs so it gave me a chance to see the way others have their's set up. Reaching out to other participants and commenting, hopefully in positive ways, gives me a sense of responsibility to support other peoples' journeys. I think this feeling would also come across to students if used in a classroom setting when making comments about other students' writing. One of the blogs I visited had indicated that she felt students would develop a sense of writing for an audience by commenting and receiving comments from others. This was kind of an "aha" moment for me because I think she is absolutely right!

Thing 10

The title of this video is How to Play Mancala. After completing Thing 10 I see that this lesson answers all the questions I had in my Thing 9 post. Yes, I can download a video from YouTube and yes, I can embed it into a presentation for my students. I chose this video because my students love playing this game, but they all have a different way of explaining the rules. So, I thought I could use this to show one version of the game that we could all learn. Youtube now appears to me to have almost limitless possibilities for educational use. I am very excited about it! I can find videos where authors talk about their own writing process or are reading their own work. If we are working on writing in a certain author's style and have it explained by that author - how wonderful is that! In the past I would have had to find or purchase a video and have to settle for what I could get my hands on. Now, I can search the internet and come up with very specific videos geared to what I am teaching. Amazing!

Thing 9

I thoroughly enjoyed YouTube and can see myself using it as a resource. It is not accessible in our elementary building, so the use of it would be for me at home. It truly seems to be unlimited in subject and everything I searched for, I found. Is there any way to embed a video from YouTube into a document or download it to your computer? Or, does it always have to be a link to YouTube?

Thing 8

Well, I had a lot of fun with mash-ups and image generators. Here is an example using an application from Big Huge Labs. There are so many choices it made my head spin. Playing around with these sites and just trying things out will be my plan for now. Uploading photos taken by students and using them for posters, or illustrations for class books, or blogs just give an endless array of choices. As far as the title design for my blog, I couldn't have managed to figure out the "how to" without my daughter's generous assistance. Thank you!

Thing 7

Flickr is my new toy. I plan on using it in my classroom in a variety of ways. It will allow me to have one more tool for making lessons interesting, personal, creative, student-focused, relevant, etc. Starting with student writing illustrations they can use to create books is my initial goal. I feel a sense of excitement and anticipation for their reactions to this media. In addition, if I can do it, anyone can do it. I plan on sharing my new discovery with any fellow teacher who might be interested.

Thing 6

I can envision so many uses for Flickr. Searching for tags to use with lessons for any content area is so appealing. Pictures to suit student interests and spark discussions and writing - wonderful! Uploading pictures into blogs, as well as being able to edit them before you upload, opens up so many possibilities.

Thing 5

I actually found subscribing to blogs enjoyable in one aspect, that is using bloglines. It makes it so simple. The frustration came in searching through blogs and finding those that I would sincerely be interested in keeping. I have a few now and will be on guard when I hit upon another one that looks promising and I have the tools to capture it. I'm not quite sure at this point how I will use this in my classroom other than searching for inspiration or maybe subscribing to blogs from other classrooms which my students could read and then leave comments. I need more experience myself, first.

Thing 4

I was talking with my son about RSS (which is totally new to me) and he felt that it could be overwhelming. I was thinking about that and realize that I tend to put too many sites in my "Favorites" and have discovered that often I don't revisit many of them. So, the idea of sorting out sites that you really want to keep up with and those you may occasionally want to visit, will be an important feature when I begin to add to my folders.

Thing 3

As I think about how I would use a blog with my students I can see the benefits of parents being able to see ongoing work of their children and being able to have conversations about it. It has also got to help with the parent/child/school relationship and the supportive aspect of that triangle. Anyway, having students publish in a blog and indicating writing goals that will be stressed in future writings is something I can see me using in my classroom.

Thing 2

After creating my own blog and then checking out other blogs, I can see I have a lot to learn. It was interesting to see the variety of ways blogs can be used. They can be informational or conversational, but to each his own. I need to really think about what type of blog I could use with my students. I am a resource teacher, but do lots of writing with my students. They get so excited when their pieces are published in book form for others to read. I can't imagine how excited about writing they would be if they knew their pieces would be part of a website. I think that's the direction I will be going first.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

After going through Thing 1 I was just thinking how great these ideas fit in with differentiation. Students investigating subjects at their own interest levels and asking their own questions about things to satisfy their curiosity is a way of assuring proper pacing. I can imagine the motivation of students greatly increasing when they know they have more opportunities to feel in control of their progress and the direction in which their interest takes them. Right now in completing Thing 2 I feel a sense of pride that I am doing something I never thought I could do. I will be eager to continue through the 23 things and share these with my colleagues in the fall.